Tuesday, November 22, 2016

The Gigamon Visibility Platform for Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) enables enterprises to gain visibility into network traffic in Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (Amazon VPC), eliminating both the visibility gap and the need for custom agents. It provides the ability to consolidate and distribute traffic to multiple security and management tools while supporting Gigamon’s patented Flow Mapping and GigaSMART applications, which employ sampling, slicing and masking to deliver only the traffic of interest to the tools or monitoring applications. The solution enables security teams to customize traffic sent to each security tool to increase its effectiveness. Gigamon said its visibility platform provides the flexibility to run security tools on-premises, in the same Amazon VPC, or in a centralized Amazon VPC.

“During the course of the last year, many customers and partners asked us to deliver a solution that provides the same level of visibility in the cloud as we offer on-premises,” said Ananda Rajagopal, vice president of products, at Gigamon. “We developed the Gigamon Visibility Platform on AWS to enable our customers to have one consistent visibility platform regardless of workload location. Now these customers can effectively manage, secure and understand all of their data-in-motion across their enterprise and AWS cloud environments.”

“The Gigamon Visibility Platform enables our customers to accelerate their ‘lift and shift’ strategy as they move workloads on AWS,” said Tim Jefferson, Global Ecosystem Leader-Security, Amazon Web Services, Inc. “They can now accelerate migration of their existing applications and workloads, while gaining greater visibility into network traffic for richer content inspection and protection of their mission-critical workloads and data.”

The Gigamon Visibility Platform on AWS is built for elastic scale. Highlights include:

“Automatic Target Selection” for elastic visibility as applications scale-out: Innovative, patent-pending method to automatically select and deliver traffic that matches a configured policy as new instances spin up

A patent-pending controller-based elastic architecture that enables organizations to start small and massively scale out to maximize the benefits in a public cloud IaaS

Open REST APIs for third-party management applications to orchestrate and automate visibility or tool vendors to perform closed loop detect-react-respond to traffic analysis

Gigamon Visibility Platform on AWS will be generally available as community AMIs (end of November) and later, through the AWS Marketplace and activated by BYOL license. List pricing for the overall solution ranges from 1.4–2.7 cents per monitored Amazon EC2 instance per hour depending on the term duration.

MACOM Technology Solutions Holdings agreed to acquire Applied Micro Circuits Corporation (AppliedMicro") for approximately $8.36 per share, consisting of $3.25 in cash and 0.1089 MACOM shares per share of AppliedMicro. The deal, which represents a 15.4% premium over AppliedMicro's closing price of $7.25 on November 18th, is valued at approximately $770 million. MACOM plans to divest AppliedMicro's non-strategic Compute business within the first 100 days of closing. The company said it is already talking to interested parties.

MACOM said the deal will accelerate its growth in optical technologies for Cloud Service Providers and Enterprise Network customers.

AppliedMicro, which supplies semiconductors for compute and computing in data centers, has approximately $165 million in TTM revenue (including the Compute business) and $82 million of cash and short-term investments. AppliedMicro's leadership PAM4 solutions based on FinFET technology and custom engagements with top-tier Data Center and service provider customers is expected to strengthen MACOM's competitive position with those customers

MACOM and AppliedMicro's pro forma combined TTM revenue was approximately $709 million including AppliedMicro's Compute business, or approximately $644 million excluding the Compute business
AppliedMicro's Connectivity business is highly complementary to MACOM's product portfolio, through the addition of market-leading OTN framers, MACsec Ethernet networking components and the industry's leading single-lambda PAM4 platform

Commenting on the transaction, John Croteau, President and Chief Executive Officer, stated, "This transaction will accelerate and expand MACOM's breakout opportunity in Enterprise and Cloud Data Centers. MACOM will now be able to provide all the requisite semiconductor content for optical networks - analog, photonic and PHY - from the switch to fiber for long haul, metro, access, backhaul and Data Center. AppliedMicro's 100G to 400G single-lambda PAM4 platform should perfectly complement MACOM's leadership in analog and photonic components for Data Centers.

"Notably, the IEEE recently recommended the adoption of AppliedMicro's single lambda PAM4 solution to be an industry standard for enterprise and Data Center connectivity, positioning this technology as the solution of choice going forward. Additionally, AppliedMicro's Connectivity business aligns well with MACOM's differentiated, high-growth business model, offering non-GAAP gross margins well in excess of MACOM's long term target operating model, long product life cycles, and sticky customer relationships."

"This is an exciting day for AppliedMicro, and we are pleased to be joining forces with MACOM. The transaction affirms the value that our employees have created and provides a strong path forward for our Connectivity business while delivering AppliedMicro stockholders a robust premium," said Paramesh Gopi, President and CEO, AppliedMicro. "This transaction will create an industry powerhouse with the scale, deep customer relationships, innovative technology, and enabling products that will help deliver explosive growth in Enterprise and Cloud Data Centers. In addition, this agreement provides a promising path forward for the Compute business, which is in the process of bringing AppliedMicro's highly-competitive third-generation X-Gene processor to market. X-Gene is well-positioned to address the large opportunity for mainstream server processors with its proven high performance cores, scalable interconnect and high per socket memory capabilities."

Barefoot Networks, a start-up developing user-programmable switching chips, announced $23 million in additional Series C funding, bringing total Series C investment to $80 million and total investment in Barefoot to over $150 million. The new funding was led by Alibaba and Tencent.
Barefoot also confirmed that its Tofino chip is on track for delivery to customers at the end of Q4 2016.
"Tencent is delighted to join hands with Barefoot as it goes to market with technology destined to make profound advancements in the ways networks are designed, built and run," said Tom Bie, VP of Technology and Engineering Group, Tencent, a leading provider of Internet value-added services in China. "

Barefoot gives network operators the ultimate freedom to create the network they want, rather than designing around limitations of available technology. We're excited to see innovation of this scope come to the market."
"Barefoot's unveiling of Tofino in June signaled the beginning of the end for the 'fixed-function' switching chips that have dominated the networking landscape since their introduction in the '90s," said Martin Izzard, CEO and co-founder, Barefoot Networks. "Venture firms, network operators and networking equipment leaders alike seized on this breakthrough, and their support of Barefoot has been unprecedented. We're extremely gratified to be working with communications companies with the scope, reach and reputation of Alibaba and Tencent."
http://www.barefootnetworks.com

Barefoot Networks, a start-up based in Palo Alto, California emerged from stealth to unveil its "Tofino" switching chip and announce that it has raised $130 million, including a strategic investment from Google.

Dubbed "the fast switch every built", Barefoot’s programmable Tofino switch chip processes packets at 6.5 terabits per second, twice as fast as the previous record holder. While conventional programmable network devices such as NPUs have orders of magnitude slower than their fixed-function brethren, Barefoot said its Tofino silicon provides the first programmable forwarding plane while setting a new performance benchmark for performance, power, and price.

The silicon is designed for user programmability via the open-source P4 programming language, enabling precise control over packets and bringing entirely new features into the switch—for example, features that replace load balancers, features that replace firewalls, features that add packet-by-packet telemetry enabling rapid debug of distributed application behavior.

Barefoot said the open-source P4 language provides software developers with the compilers, tools, and applications they need to successfully program the fastest networking gear. This could eliminate "middle boxes" that add latency, complexity and cost to a data center network. Barefoot’s new compiler technology has taken P4 programs – written by customers – and converted them into blazing-fast running code executed on Tofino. Barefoot will open an ecosystem of compilers, tools and P4 code to make P4 accessible.

Barefoot Networks also disclosed that it has recently closed a $57 million funding round led by Goldman Sachs Principal Strategic Investments and Google Inc. This brings total funding to more than $130 million to date.

“The basic fixed-function switch architecture was set in 1996 and has remained unchanged for twenty years,” noted Nick McKeown, co-founder and chief scientist at Barefoot Networks. “Yet everything else in the data center changed. We went from monolithic software to VM’s and then to containers and fully distributed applications. With the rise of the cloud, data center traffic patterns changed as did the role of the data center. How could a 1996 switching architecture be the right foundation for 2016’s applications? In all other parts of the data center we have moved to programmability. Tofino enables this move for networking. It empowers network owners and their infrastructure partners to design, optimize and innovate to their specific requirements.”

"Mega-scale data center operators greatly benefit from building their own networking equipment and writing the software that runs on it. The forwarding plane, though, has been off-limits to programmers because of the rigid nature of high-performance switching solutions,” noted Martin Izzard, co-founder and CEO, Barefoot Networks. “With P4 and Barefoot, the landscape is changing; users can develop the P4 programs to define the innovative forwarding plane behavior, introducing new ways to monitor and analyze network traffic, making networks more reliable, scalable, efficient and secure."

Citing its ability to combine network, cloud, mobility and IT architectures into a converged platform for network services and applications, VMware announced an expanded focus on NFV solutions for communication service providers (CSPs) and telecommunications carriers (telcos) globally.

The company enables a multi-vendor and multi-function NFV platform, based on its Cross-Cloud Architecture, which is OpenStack compatible and supports diverse network functions and applications.

VMware currently has more than 80 NFV production deployments with leading global service providers across all geographies, deployed directly as well as through Network Equipment Provider (NEP) partners and Virtual Network Function (VNF) vendors. Today VMware has certified 24 virtual network functions from 20 vendors as VMware Ready for NFV, with a strong pipeline of additional VNFs awaiting certification.

VMware also announced the promotion of Shekar Ayyar to Executive Vice President and General Manager, Telco Group. Ayyar leads VMware's effort to accelerate the digital transformation with its Cross-Cloud Architecture and software-defined infrastructure for NFV. Under his leadership the company has executed on several acquisitions including Nicira and AirWatch, and established itself as a leading provider of NFV infrastructure. Prior to joining VMware, Ayyar held senior roles at Lucent Technologies (now part of Nokia), BindView (acquired by Symantec), and Instantis (acquired by Oracle), spanning product management, marketing, and business development, and was also a consultant with McKinsey & Co.

"VMware is in a unique position to enable the transformational benefits of NFV for service providers given its leadership position in virtualization technology," said Pat Gelsinger, chief executive officer, VMware. "Shekar's experience as a proven leader, with the right combination of knowledge and strategic thinking, will help expand VMware's already strong foothold in the Telco market."

Baidu said its intent is to provide developers with access to its AI-based technologies. Baidu has also released API for facial recognition, optical character recognition, natural language processing and others. In September, the company also open sourced its deep learning framework PaddlePaddle, an easy-to-use platform allowing developers to apply deep learning to their products and services.

"We are at the dawn of the AI era. By opening our AI technologies, we will make it easier for everyone to create AI-enabled applications," says Andrew Ng, chief scientist of Baidu.

In just three years, the daily requests for speech recognition grew from 5 million in 2013 to 140 million this year, and the number of daily requests for speech synthesis stands today at 200 million. In the meantime, the number of developers using Baidu's speech system has also grown from 10,000 in 2014 to 140,000 this year.

Pre-deployment work on Hawaiki, the 14,000 km transpacific cable system scheduled for completion in mid-2018, is on track. Hawaiki will link Australia and New Zealand to the mainland United States, as well as Hawaii, with options to expand to several South Pacific islands.

Hawaiki Submarine Cable LP and TE SubCom announced that system manufacturing has commenced. Some updates:

More than 1,000 kilometers of lightweight cable has been manufactured to date for Hawaiki at TE SubCom’s facility in Newington, N.H., USA.

Manufacturing of Hawaiki repeaters is underway.

Detailed landing surveys have been completed for sites in Pacific City, Oregon and Kapolei, Hawaii.

Completion of deep sea survey from Oregon to Hawaii.

Survey has covered all of U.S. Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), with the completion of the branch to American Samoa

In September 2016, Hawaiki Submarine Cable LP officially submitted for a submarine cable landing license from the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC).

Demonstrating its commitment to the connectivity of Pacific Islands, Hawaiki has added three additional branching units to enable the future connection of New Caledonia, Fiji and Tonga.